


The Waters of Lethe are Sweeter Still

by Prix



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Coming of Age, Golden Age (Narnia), It's a human superpower forgetting, Jealousy, Menstruation, Mostly Gen, Other, Other: See Story Notes, Psychological Trauma, Puberty, Rape/Non-con Elements, Seasons, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21768859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: They make a home in Narnia and, perhaps more importantly, Narnia makes a home out of them.- - -Regarding Warnings:The "underage" and "non-con" elements of this story are not straightforward or presented in a positive light. See story notes for further explanation.Regarding "Mostly Gen":This fic is pretty straightforward gen but may be read through some Pevencest glasses if you want to. Again, please read notes.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Jadis | The White Witch & Edmund Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie & Tumnus, Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	The Waters of Lethe are Sweeter Still

**Author's Note:**

> **Re: Non-con:** It is ambiguous as to whether or not it is a dream or magical assault of a sort. I'm sorry I don't know why I wrote this I feel sad. 
> 
> **Re: Underage:** The above is sort of an experience of puberty so it's vague but I ticked the box after much hem-hawing just to be safe. 
> 
> This fic can be read as gen without any real problem as far as I am concerned. However, this is sort of written as a pilot to a fic that I have been working on (technically) for about eight years that involves some Pevencest. Basically it is the background noise to some of my headcanon that I am working with for any future and more involved fics I may publish in this vein. 
> 
> **Content Disclaimer:** I do not endorse incest or view it as a psychologically healthy choice in real life. More thoughts on the matter [here](https://prixmium.dreamwidth.org/21096.html).

At first, forgetting is impossible. Even as they sit upon four thrones, learn courtly manners and establish some of their own, they are children from Finchley. But, bit by bit, time takes its toll. 

The children known as the Pevensies, like fruit fallen from their parents’ trees, are rolled along by beast, hand, and foot and into a river which washes away all but the shape of their childhood, a shadow on the wall in firelight shaped like a jet plane overhead that sends the heart racing toward the safety of the present. They make a home in Narnia and, perhaps more importantly, Narnia makes a home out of them.

* * * 

Susan stirs in the middle of the night. Spring has come, but it is young yet, and she clutches at the covers and tugs them up beneath her chin. Dissatisfied with her efforts to warm herself, she moves without seeing. 

Her feet touch the floor, and she is shocked into true consciousness. The floor is made of cold, smooth stone, and she has a large chamber all her own. She blinks a few times and rubs at her eyes, striding over to the wash basin with the confidence of a person who has done it dozens of times before. 

She dries her face with a woven cloth that is softer than it is smooth. She breathes in and gets the impression of cool air deep within her nostrils. She smells charcoal. 

Tiptoeing along the cold stone, she crouches down before the fireplace and kindles the flames with a learning but steady hand. At first, there had been servants for this, but they had started to dismiss them at night. Their devotion and admiration had seemed too easy to misuse, so now the kings and queens of Narnia are all but alone in the west wing of Cair Paravel as they sleep, only the barest regiment of guards trotting along on hooves with a distant, intermittent echo. 

As a small fire grows into one more suited for warming the chamber, Susan gets to her feet and looks into the mirror hanging on the wall. Her hair is dark and long. Her mouth is red but a bit chapped from the dry air. She touches her cheek and then reaches out to touch the mirror itself. It is solid and her finger leaves a smudge against it. 

She knows then that this is not a dream. She will not wake back in her bed in London, at least not this morning. She will not find herself back in the Professor’s house, out in the country, either. Calm in knowing this, she crawls back beneath the bedclothes. 

The following day, Susan seeks the counsel of a small, slow creature that seems to be a cross between a monkey and a teddy-bear. 

“Sloth,” Edmund explains to her as the creature takes its slow and easy time coming down from its tree. 

It has long claws that look as if they could be lethal, but instead of being caked in blood, they seem to be the only part of the sloth that isn’t covered in a dusting of green that seems to be growing on on its fur. 

“Your Highness,” the sloth says to Susan, each word taking the time three would take the typical Narnian, “I am honoured you would come to see my wares. Each is crafted with the utmost care.” 

Susan watches Edmund close his eyes and hears him breathe out through his nose, his small and thin frame seeming to grow by merit of forced patience. When the sloth has finally finished speaking, Susan is grinning as she comes to sit upon her knees before a rattan basket which the sloth comes to cling to the side of. The sloth reaches down and draws one knit thing and then another out, explaining each. It is particularly proud of the dyes it has begun to experiment with. 

Some hours later, Susan has purchased a wide, knitted oval to be used as a rug at the side of her bed. She has folded it across her lap and her horse walks steadily along, mindful not to upset it or drop it to the ground. The sun is setting. 

“That took an eternity,” Edmund says dramatically, gripping at the end of his tunic with one hand to dispel frustration now that he is far enough out of earshot to avoid being cruel. 

“He did his best,” Susan says dryly. It would have been easy to become frustrated herself, as they will likely not arrive back at Cair Paravel until well after dark, but watching it wind Edmund up is at least some consolation. 

Before either of them sleep, she wrangles Edmund into helping her position the new rug just beneath where she is likely to place her feet when she wakes. With that, the cold will not shock her into mindfulness when she stands, and the stark dividing line between where she expects to be and where she is blurs just a little bit more. 

* * * 

Autumn is Edmund’s favourite time of year. After the first year, he stops trying to determine when, exactly, his birthday is, but he still feels cheerful exhilaration as the desire to escape from the summer sun gives way to a more pleasant sense of light being infused into his bones ahead of the winter. 

He can personally assure the beavers and the fauns and the dryads and all the rest that the coming winter will not last forever. 

They will see another spring, another autumn, and he will have grown a little taller. 

He learns the gratifying ache of harvest-time. He helps to oversee the distribution of different ingredients from one end of Narnia to the other. The work of digging and tugging things out of the ground and putting them into dry safekeeping strips his tender palms and replaces them with the same only a little rougher. 

He doesn’t say it out loud, but being made-again – for him – seems to come more out of this than the flowers of spring. 

The first autumn, his body seems to be broken every night when he falls into oblivious sleep, sometimes sleeping in a little encampment out in the woods or on the plains rather than making the journey back to Cair Paravel. He wakes every morning, sore but setting his tender jaw, ready to try again. 

The second year, he knows what he’s doing. He gives orders but isn’t afraid that it is the same mean-spiritedness that had gotten him into trouble upon entering Narnia, come back to haunt them. He stops blushing and looking askance when they call him ‘king.’ 

A third autumn comes, and he has more stamina than he used to. Instead of falling into a sleep like death as soon as the sun goes down, he starts to look up into the sky with the centaurs. They teach him of the constellations of Narnia, and the visions of smoke and planes with bombs in their bellies are replaced by the thought of a canopy filled with both cold fire and living, warm beings made of pure, clean light. 

The ache in his body settles in deeper. Instead of bruises tender to the slightest touch, he begins to feel the pull of muscles and tendons as they work with and sometimes against each other. In some places, bones start to jut out where they didn’t before. In others, muscles start to show themselves a part of his flesh. He rests more easily and carries more weight with hardly a thought of _true_ complaint. He laughs along with the centaurs, the fauns, the dryads, and even a few dwarves who have appeared to make a tentative sort of peace with the other Narnians. 

He has never been less afraid of the dark. 

It is not until the fourth autumn, though, that he learns to wish it wouldn’t end. 

He is in his bed in Cair Paravel, exhausted but pleasantly so. He has even had the presence of mind to change into a clean tunic after washing down at the river before he had ridden home. His skin pricked at the cold, and it makes him altogether more eager to burrow beneath the weight of the blankets and wait for his own body heat to lull him to sleep. 

At first sleep is pleasant and empty. Dreamless. Following that, the dreams that do take shape lose it just as quickly – amber smoke giving way to nothing but warmth. Warmth everywhere, like a second source of heat beneath the covers with him. 

The tension across his chest gives way. He breathes more deeply and a little out of rhythm. He might even forget to breathe at all for a moment. 

His entire body feels as if it is being touched. Weight above and weight around and pressing in, first on his chest, then his abdomen, and finally weighing down against his hips. He is stronger now than he has ever been, but he feels willing and weak for a moment. An ember flares in the pit of his stomach, and finally he draws in a deep breath. 

He doesn’t even think about it when he tries to lift his hips from the bed, feeling visceral satisfaction run up along his spine. He exhales and he feels as though he is awake. His eyelids are heavy, but that flicker in his stomach warms his blood and moves down into his thighs and, less shy than before, another heartbeat or two starts to make him hard. 

It isn’t the first time it’s happened, and when he had sheepishly asked, Peter had jostled him by the shoulder and quickly dismissed it as ‘normal.’ He’d told him not to worry, but they definitely hadn’t spoken about it further. Certainly, every time before, it has never felt like this. 

He doesn’t know what to do except to move his hips again, eyelids batting heavily as he seems to fade in and out of sleep, in and out of the warm and tempting opposite of oblivion. Something stings, and he realises it seems to be a tooth breaking a bit of chapped skin on his lip. 

Edmund searches for an object, an explanation, an anchor in the confusing flood of _feeling_ that runs through his body. 

He feels he has almost found it. His fingers reach out, up, and then fall away again as if he has been paralysed. His blood runs cold everywhere except for in his groin, and his own fingers aren’t those that find it. 

_”Edmund, dear,”_ says a voice that is etched into the darkest places into his mind. It is sweet, but it is _cold_. There is the sound of a soft clucking of a tongue near his ear, and he feels breath so cold against it that it burns him. He finds that he can’t open his eyes, and he doesn’t know if he is frozen from fear or from power beyond himself. 

It doesn’t seem to matter what he is or isn’t wearing. 

He is naked beneath her in a way that he has never _been_ naked before. 

“No,” he says to her, rough and clear and with learned authority. Or, at least, that’s how he tries to say it. It comes out more like a hoarse whisper. “Stop it. Go away,” he says, his voice pleading now, breaking and going higher than it has been for a while. He isn’t particularly articulate, but with gritted teeth, a set jaw, and a burst of will, he opens his eyes. 

She is there and she isn’t. She leans against the heel of one hand while the other is wrapped around him. He wishes it would _go away_ , that she would. He blinks a few times, surprised at the way his eyes burn. He is _so cold_ \- everywhere except where her cool, dewy hand touches. 

_”If there’s something you want, Edmund, it’s yours.”_ she says. Her voice is cruel in how nonchalant it is as her hand moves in a way he hadn’t known he wanted it to. He still doesn’t want it to. His eyes burn hotter, and part of him is glad of the warmth. He’s freezing. He feels dizzy, as if he could see himself from above and see his lips turning purple and then blue as he breathes ragged and shallow breaths through them. 

“I don’t,” he tells her, except he has given up telling her. Telling anyone. He doesn’t know where he is. He is in his bed, but he cannot scream; there is no fire in the fireplace, and he is cold. He wants to go home. 

Home is Narnia with life breathed back into it, and life doesn’t live wherever this is. 

_”Oh, that lion has taken your teeth from you, Edmund. I do believe I remember a boy who was not so shy about what he knew in his belly was right...”_

She is taunting him. It makes him angry, but he cannot fight her. He has never been able to. The only way it ends is that he will lose. 

He closes his eyes tight until it gives him a headache. 

_”Oh, it doesn’t hurt does it? If it does… couldn’t we say that it is just? You hurt me, and I hurt you… we’re the same, Edmund dear._

“Please,” he says, and it is a prayer to anyone who could help him. Aslan. He thinks this would never happen to Lucy. She is _good_ , and he just… isn’t. 

_”All you have to do is ask...”_

And before he can fight his way through the frostbite that is taking him from the inside out, his eyes shoot open and she is gone. His body is burning up as if a fever is breaking over him. He is sweating, sitting up in bed, his abdomen tense and aching. And his pants are wet but not with piss. 

For a moment, he thinks nothing at all. His head feels clear, and he is grateful for that. 

But then he has to move and clean himself up, and he feels wretched and sick. He feels saliva flood into his mouth, and he very nearly gags. His eyes burn instead, and a couple of hot tears do escape their corners, but he dutifully wipes them away with the back of his wrist. 

He tries to forget, harder and more viciously, as he must learn to temper having a man’s blood. Sometimes, he thinks about asking Peter how he does it, but he cannot imagine explaining this particular trouble to him when it arises. And even Aslan knows anyone fauns would be no help. 

* * * 

In the fifth year of the rule of High King Peter and his siblings, they are met by an emissary from Archenland. 

Peter is rather relieved when the collective response from the others matches his own. Dumb disbelief, gaping mouths, and glances between one another’s eyes that question the reality of what they are seeing. _Another_ human. In Narnia. 

“There _are_ named places off the edge of our map,” Edmund reasons aloud. 

Peter knows he’s right, but it still ires him. 

“How observant of you,” Susan says, beating him to saying what he is thinking. She glances across the court where the other Narnians seem far more interested in asking the other human questions. 

Even Lucy seems reluctant to approach him. 

“Are we sure they’re _real_ humans?” she asks without much hope, her head tilting toward Edmund’s shoulder with a kind of feigned discretion as she holds a goblet in both her hands, though she no longer needs both to easily balance it. 

A sly grin blossoms and brightens across Edmund’s face. 

Peter meets Susan’s eyes and wishes he felt like smiling. There is something grave and cold in his chest, and he wishes he could blame it on the encroachment of winter coming again, but until now he has never minded the cold. It has always meant a roaring fire in the hall and being with his family and those they trust the most. It has been enjoying the stores put away in autumn and a time of gifts and hope that spring will come again. The Narnians have not tired of that hope’s novelty and neither has he. 

He’d like to think. He feels no sense of novelty as he straightens his spine to his full height, righting his shoulders. He feels as if he needs to defend them from something, even if all good sense is telling him that this man from Archenland comes in peace. 

“What would define an unreal human?” Edmund asks Lucy, but Peter cannot bear the cold reflected back from Susan’s eyes. He turns away and is walking before he explains. 

“We should find out about their numbers,” he says. 

Susan follows after him, and for a moment he thinks he is glad of the company. 

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks softly. 

“Nothing,” he promises her. He feels heaviness as if he is lying, though he cannot be sure he is, and if he is, he doesn’t understand why. 

“Mm,” she hums dubiously. 

He forces a little bit of a smile but can’t convince her as he looks over at her. She gives him as sceptical a look as she can manage. 

“It’s just… why didn’t they come until _now_? Where were they when all of Narnia was lost and cold and dead,” he asks, finding surprising bitterness on his tongue. 

Susan reaches over and squeezes his hand, or more just his smallest finger and the one that comes after. She lets go as quickly as her warmth seeps in. 

“Maybe that’s just it,” she says gently. “Perhaps they didn’t know there was anything left to save.” 

Peter swallows the even more bitter remark that could have followed as they are nearly upon the rest of the Narnian court who are being far more gracious hosts to this first outside visitor to Narnia. 

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting—“ Peter says, cutting himself short and watching the man expectantly. 

“Clyf,” the man supplies. He is a man who looks to be near forty. There are bristles of silver in his otherwise dark beard and streaks of it in the hair atop his head. There is nothing about his expression that looks beguiling. Then he bows his head and draws an arm in before his chest. “Your Majesty, High King Peter,” he addresses. 

When he lifts his gaze, Peter can tell he is looking at Susan. 

“And your High Queen?” he asks. 

Peter feels the correction harden in his throat. He glances over at Susan as if he needs to search her for an explanation. 

She tosses her head in a way that sends her heavy hair back over her shoulder. Then she extends her hand in a greeting that is softer than a bow or a nod of the head. Clyf seems bemused by it. 

“Well,” he says, bashfully. 

“Peter is the High King,” Susan says gracefully. “I am merely a queen,” she says, a bit wryly, drawing out laughter from something that is not particularly funny. She draws her hand away and stands straight and appears calm except for the way she twiddles her thumbs together. 

“Oh, I dare say you are not ‘merely’ anything. You are a miracle,” Clyf enthuses. 

Peter finds his gaze drawn to Clyf with offence that he knows he should not take. He takes a deep breath and forces it to quell in his chest. 

“All of you,” Clyf says. “I am… quite certain the whole court of Archenland would love to return the hospitality you have shown us.” 

“Well, you have certainly chosen a time of year when hospitality is most important to Narnians,” Peter says, and he tries to believe he is being entirely sincere. 

“You would bring such cheer to the court of Archenland come the new year,” Clyf says, “which is what I am here to address.” 

“Well, I am certain—” Peter says it, and he is utterly startled when Clyf seems not to have been finished. 

“You will shine as brightly as any star in the eyes of all the noblemen there, Your Royal Highness,” Clyf says. He is most certainly not talking to him. 

The unintentional break in decorum seems to centre Peter. He is no longer feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat driving him toward anger. The smile that comes after is just a little warmer, but it is worse because the shame he feels has made its way through the cold into his heart. 

Jealousy. That’s what he’s been feeling. He doesn’t want their lives to change. He doesn’t want someone suitable simply because he is noble to take her away. To tear them apart. 

* * * 

Mr. Tumnus is Lucy’s oldest friend. She has not always understood him, but she has always known that what they lack in understanding, they have never lacked in affection. 

She is secure in the belief that no matter how strange he seems, she will always be able to find the right question to ask. Then everything will be right and clear as rain again. 

She goes right on believing this even when her questions become harder to ask. 

The first spring celebration after their coronation is different from what Lucy had expected. For one thing, it takes place at night rather than during the bright day. She had wanted to attend so badly, and yet by the time she rides to the great, open clearing in the wood, she is leaning heavily back against Susan’s chest and belly atop the horse who’d agreed to carry them both. 

“We’re here, Lucy,” Susan whispers to her, putting on that exaggerated gentility that she puts on when she is playing at being their mother. She makes the motion of pinching her shoulder, but it doesn’t hurt. 

Lucy clears her vision and rubs at her eyes. She lets Peter help her down off the horse. When her feet find the grass and she feels the tickle of dewy grass touching her legs, she is a bit more awake. Then she feels the incredible, radiant warmth of a fire that is bigger than any she has ever seen. She runs for it with interest, and Peter only just catches her by the arm before she runs right into a whirling pattern of dance that her eyes can take in. 

Mr. Tumnus had told her there had been dancing. 

Lucy has never danced before, but she has loved the idea of dancing. She jumps up and down a little, doing her best to take in and see more. 

There are thudding drums, the plucking of strings, and the blowing of horns and flutes. The music is also louder than anything Lucy can remember enjoying. 

It takes a few minutes, but her eyes focus and her heartbeat settles back down in her chest. Then she looks around for anyone else she knows. 

She desperately wants to see Mr. Tumnus. He had so looked forward to this day! 

When she finds Mr. Tumnus, he is in a long shadow against a tree, just shy of the lapping orange light from the roaring fire. He isn’t alone. 

“Mr. Tumnus!” she calls with the enthusiasm of a plan accomplished. She dashes for him. 

The sound of feminine laughter and a high-pitched yelp of alarm hardly register in her mind. She stops short when she realizes that Mr. Tumnus’s fingers are lifted up, fingertips poised to brush against the face of a woman who seems to be nearly in the shape of a human – nearly – but who is made of a tangle of vines and flowers with wind and subtle light shining through as though her clothing and her flesh were indistinguishable from her very being. If she wore clothing at all. 

Lucy doesn’t understand why her face feels hot or why she takes a step backward. 

“Lucy,” Mr. Tumnus pleads softly. 

Something in the pleading tone makes her even more certain she should run away, but she doesn’t. Her feet don’t seem to work. 

She hears Mr. Tumnus sigh. Even though she had understood that he was probably a grown-up, she had never heard him seem disappointed to speak with her before. Terrified, even, that first terrible night, but never disappointed. 

“I’ll find you,” Mr. Tumnus says. Not to her. “If… If that’s what you’d like,” he says, losing some of his nerve. 

If the flower-lady answers – dryads, something in the back of her mind corrects, growing a little more into this place even while she feels like she might start crying – she doesn’t hear her. She only lifts her gaze when Mr. Tumnus’s hooves approach and he crouches down before her. 

“Hello, Lucy,” he says. He has put on the tone of someone excited to see her. A friend. And for the first time, she doesn’t trust it. It is the very first time, and she knows it. She doesn’t want to look at him and stares down at his haunches instead. “Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to be surprised to see you. Of course you would be here, Your Highness,” he says. 

“You can just call me Lucy,” she says, and she means it even though it comes through pouting that drapes a slouch over her entire body. 

“Oh, well, thank you, Your Royal Highness… Lucy,” he says. She can tell that he is trying to make her smile. Peter does that. Susan does, too. Edmund doesn’t try and sometimes doesn’t have to. Before, Mr. Tumnus never had to either. 

“You didn’t want to see me,” she says, at least giving him the fairness of levelling her complaint before passing judgment. She folds her arms across her body against the little bit of a bite she feels in the air. She wonders if it is the dryad’s doing. 

“No, you only surprised me,” Mr. Tumnus assures her. He reaches for her elbows and gently unfurls her arms. It feels no different than it ever has. She meets his eyes and blinks at him a few times, trying to suss out the truth. 

“Why were you surprised?” she asks. 

“Well, I was talking to someone. No one _more_ important than my Queen,” he says earnestly. 

“Is she your friend?” Lucy asks with dawning, tentative acceptance. 

“Well, yes. I should think so,” Mr. Tumnus says. His face is turning redder, and she knows what that means, but she cannot imagine why he feels that way about having a friend. “Well, perhaps… more than that, but who’s to know yet,” he says, by way of an explanation that only manages to obscure mystify her even more. 

“’More than a friend’?” she recites to him with baffled interest. 

He gives her a bashful smile and a little bow of his head. He chuckles softly, but she doesn’t think he thinks she is stupid for it. She senses that he is protecting her, and she doesn’t think she minds that, even if she doesn’t know what she needs protecting from. She is startled out of any further suspicion by a fond tap to the tip of her nose before Mr. Tumnus starts to rise to his full height again. 

“I’m sure you’ll understand when you’re older.” 

She doesn’t like that answer very much, but with the tap to her nose she laughs and decides to let bygones be. She stays with him for a little while, and spins her round and round until she falls down with a wild thrill. She wants to do it once more, but then she wants to stop. She drinks fresh, deliciously sweet water from a large, beautiful basin made of mother of pearl. She doesn’t understand why Mr. Tumnus is particular about which water she drinks, but she trusts that he has given her the best as she cannot imagine any sweeter water than this. He stays with her for a little while, and she doesn’t mind when she loses track of him later that night. 

Lucy does get older. Old enough that she begins to understand why Mr. Tumnus does not wish for her to be his sole companion at every festival in the wood. She doesn’t begrudge him for it, though she tries not to think about it too deeply when she first begins to understand. At first, it makes her a little queasy, and she would never want to hurt his feelings. But that passes in time, and soon gives way to a sort of melancholy amusement.

She hears Mr. Tumnus’s hooves tapping along as he walks at a slow and not entirely steady pace. She often hears him before she sees him, and she can tell his footsteps from any other hooves that happen to clack along the marble and stone floors, even to the point that she can tell they are different after a night of drinking the special spring water she has not yet been deemed old enough to taste. 

Finally, she decides to turn from the cushioned seat by a window to see him, putting on a crooked grin, intent on needling him – only just a little. Only, she has had a headache all day and when she shifts the sunlight that beams in through the window goes from mysteriously comforting to blinding. She winces, and that tension seems to shoot down into the lowest part of her abdomen. It _hurts_ , and for a moment she can think of nothing except the way her body seems to want to turn inside out. 

The sound that comes from her throat is not unlike the sound she has heard people make when they had been stabbed or shot through with an arrow, but she hardly hears it at all. 

“Lucy?” Mr. Tumnus asks, suddenly clopping alongside her and coming into view. 

She sighs, vaguely disappointed that she had missed his interest. Then it occurs to her that he has heard her making a fuss over a stomachache, and she sits up straighter, smoothing her hands down over her clothes. Even the faint warmth of her hands seems to comfort her belly, but she resists leaving them there stubbornly. 

She manages a half-measure of the smile she had been wearing before. 

“Mr. Tumnus,” she says quite formally, trying to recover some of her dignity as she straightens her shoulders. “You’ve come in quite late this morning,” she says. She had been planning to say it for at least an hour. 

Mr. Tumnus’s face is suddenly quite nearly the colour of a setting sun. 

“Oh, yes, Your Highness. I beg your pardon. I simply lost track of the time, and I fear—” he says. 

She does not want him to fear anything, so she rolls her eyes and braces her hands against the cushion beneath her to ease herself up. 

“Was she nice?” she asks instead with the tenderest implication that if ‘she’ hadn’t been that there would be consequences. 

“Well, yes, she—” Mr. Tumnus says, but Lucy cannot resist as she rises to her feet. 

“What was her name? If you remember her—” she says, only in the most good-natured way. She wishes that one of them would stay and keep him company now, her jealousy long since having curled up beneath her visions of how lonely it must be when he does venture out of Cair Paravel to spend some time in his old family home. 

She doesn’t finish what she is saying, though, because upon standing she feels the strangest and most sickening sensation right at the centre of her, between her thighs. It makes her feel dizzy. The sensation is that of something very solid and wet coming _out_ of her body, and her hands ball into little fists. 

She knows what she will see when she looks down now, but she still swallows hard to brace herself. Down the front of her gown, there is nothing out of the ordinary, but when she looks back over her shoulder, she sees the gory stain that has blossomed there without her even realizing while she had been busy basking in the sunlight. 

Her hand comes up to clamp over her mouth as if her silly words had brought this upon her, or better still that she shouldn’t have been thinking of them while he had been on his way. She cannot bear the thought of Mr. Tumnus seeing _this_. 

Of course, it isn’t the first time she has seen or handled her own blood, even recently. And she has spoken to Susan about her own body’s courses that come and go with the seasons and moon-tide. But she had somehow not expected it to simply _happen_ , all at once. 

“Lucy?” Mr. Tumnus asks. He takes a step toward her. She steps backward until her back touches a wall and she holds up her hands to keep him at bay. “Are you in pain?” he asks. 

“No. Yes, a little, but nothing to worry about,” Lucy says through gritted teeth. Her eyes burn with embarrassment and she closes them to keep them from spilling over. “I am terribly sorry to ask you this, but could you… turn around?” she asks. 

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, I don’t understand—” Mr. Tumnus says, but the is already in the process of marshalling his body into action. Then his eyes flit down her gown, down toward the floor, and she knows not what without looking down but that _something_ has made it apparent. 

She wishes she would disappear into the wall itself or possibly out the window. 

“Oh, Queen Lucy,” he says sympathetically. 

“No, don’t,” she pleads, looking as far away as she can out the near window, grateful she supposes that jumping out of shame would be impossible without first shattering perfectly inoffensive glass. 

“But Queen Lucy, there is nothing for you to be ashamed of,” he says. He reaches out for her shoulder to draw her attention. She looks at him and notes the way he is keeping his gaze level with her eyes, not looking down at whatever mess her clothing has become. 

“I’ll help you,” he says. “Don’t you fear a thing. You come along and we’ll get you some fresh clothes and a hot cup of tea. And if you like I can send for something for the pain,” he says. “There are many remedies for such things in Narnia,” he explains, because even after all these years, she is still learning. 

“Thank you, Mr. Tumnus,” she says, and she allows him to walk at her side and guide her toward her bedchamber. For a few moments, she lets him guide her completely, keeping her eyes shut tight, but bit by bit she realises that moving along is perhaps keeping the bleeding in check until she can do something about it to avoid ruining another gown. 

As soon as they enter her room, she quickly shuffles behind a changing screen and, with no thought of mistrust or embarrassment, begins to disrobe and replace her stained garments. Mr. Tumnus discreetly provides her with warmed water and cloths and anything else she thinks to ask him for. 

While she works, finding herself more annoyed at the inconvenience than humiliated by the end of the affair, she relaxes enough to speak to him conversationally again. 

“I’m sorry you had to be the one to help me today,” she says. 

“Why?” Mr. Tumnus asks. She glances around the changing screen and sees him blinking with confusion. She ducks back into obscurity and finally makes herself decent again. 

“Well, I suppose I’d always thought Susan would. Or Mrs. Beaver. Or any… you know, ladylike creature,” she explains with a soft laugh. 

“You needn’t be ashamed,” he reiterates. “This only means that you are a woman now,” he says with a shaky but proud flourish. “You may one day be the mother of another Daughter of Eve,” he says without much hesitation. 

She is glad to stay behind the screen a little longer because then he will not see the far-off look in her eyes as she smiles weakly at the thought. Even as they have both continued to _grow up_ here in Narnia, she thinks, he has never quite understood the laughter she has at his expense, every time he tries once more to find a lover in the wood.


End file.
